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Partner Funds

This last week marked a year since we publicly announced Foundry Group Next. The timing also happens to mark the second anniversary of our starting to work together on the portfolio. I wake up every morning thankful for the group of people that we get to work with every day. One of the secrets to Foundry Group and the broader Foundry family is that we’ve been lucky to surround ourselves with quality people across our portfolio companies and our partner funds.

When we were forming the strategy for our FG Next fund we struggled with the right wording for that portion of the portfolio that included limited partner commitments to other managers. We don’t think of this as a traditional LP-GP relationship and struggled with the fund of funds nomenclature. While, financially, we do make limited partner commitments and do not seek special economics or terms, we’ve been very clear that we’re also investing emotionally in the success of these partners in their own business. We want to see them grow and develop as investors with the presumption that we all benefit together in their success.

The “Partner Fund” designation seems to better reflect the way we feel about our relationship with this part of our family. We think of each group and individual GP as a partner who we’d like to support in this version of an extended firm. We will undoubtedly have investment success and failure together. We will certainly disagree over specifics and style differences. When I think through the collection of individuals and firms, however, it is a group of people with whom we’re proud to be associated and thankful to call partners.

We’ve been delinquent in talking more about these partners and this portfolio. We’ve publicly announced 15 Partner Funds to date. We’re very proud of these relationships and each one is worth calling out individually. We do that with our company investments and will begin doing so with our funds. We’re only 14 funds behind so there is writing to do!